Film series: VistaVision!

This spring at Cornell Cinema, we are pleased to continue our exploration of the history of film technologies with a focus on VistaVision.

VistaVision is a widescreen film format introduced by Paramount Studios in the 1950s to compete with 20th Century Fox’s Cinemascope. VistaVision cameras work by turning the film negative on its side, so that the film images are captured horizontally, rather than vertically. The result was a large format film negative that was printed across 8 perforations, rather than the standard 4 perforations, resulting in a much higher quality image.

While they did produce some specialized horizontal prints, VistaVision was revolutionary because negatives could be printed onto standard 35mm films and projected using standard cinema projectors but achieve a remarkably fine grain film print and high-resolution image. Cinemascope, on the other, required both specialized cameras for filming and special projectors with anamorphic lenses for exhibition. Among the first films to be shot in VistaVision were Michael Curtiz’s White Christmas (1954) and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956). Alfred Hitchcock shot some of his most famous films in VistaVision, including To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), and North by Northwest (1959).

VistaVision fell out of favor in the 1960s due to the development of new processes and film stocks. However, filmmakers have continued to return to the format for producing specialized visual effects – perhaps most famously for the original Star Wars (1977). Disused cameras were often sold overseas, so there are a also number of well-known Japanese films from the 1970s that used the process, including Nagisa Ōshima's controversial In the Realm of the Senses (1976) and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance is Mine (1979). Most recently, VistaVision was used in filming director Brady Corbet’s critically acclaimed, The Brutalist (2024), which recently won the Golden Globe for Best Picture. 

Our Cornell Cinema series will feature four, ground-breaking VistaVision films: Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), and The Brutalist. Each deploy VistaVision in unique ways, but all feature memorable, high-quality visual effects that were possible to capture thanks to this groundbreaking — and still relevant — widescreen technology.